Lovely describes itself as "the only rental marketplace where renters can search, apply, and pay rent within a single, fully integrated platform." Spot on example of one more firm taking responsibility for the customer experience from End to End.

All news coverage has noted that a monthly rent check is one of, if not THE only physical check that many renters write every month. Finding a stamp, an envelope and a mailbox can be a surprisingly significant challenge, at times resulting in late payments for renters who manage the rest of their lives online.

Given this dynamic - Lovely takes a terrific new tack on technology adoption.

As covered in the Verge and Inman, rather than relying on landlords and property managers to change the way they accept payments, Lovely enables renters - the ones with the most to gain - to drive adoption. In a model similar to Open Table, the system is free for consumers and monetizes with a nominal charge for B2B users. I love this - as it decentralizes decision-making and makes it easier for individual customers to drive their landlords towards solutions the renters prefer.

Real estate as an industry is often criticized for its hesitation to adopt new technology. However, slower innovation is understandable and, in many cases, logical - because change is risky. For the most part, the traditional procedures such as rent checks "work" - and any departure from the normal process could potentially cause more harm than good (if it ain't broke, don't f$@# with it....etc). So, if Pay with Lovely works, it may alleviate landlord anxiety, by providing 'proof' that customers want and will use the new method.

The payments story has been in the works for months. Lovely closed its Series A and acquired Rentmatic.com last November. Rentmatic is reported to have processed more than $60 million in rent payments since it opened for business in 2006, and Lovely aims to leverage that technology in its new platform.

Lovely is sweetening the deal with an awesome rent giveaway of up to $2,500 for renters who adopt Pay with Lovely. If Lovely paid your rent for one month, what would YOU do with the money?!

Unlocking data for DIFFERENT players in the ecosystem. For example, updater provides a service for consumers through change of address, but also provides aggregated behavioral data to brokers or service providers –

Designing products that away from just insight, to decision-making tools. “It’s not enough to sell the data – it needs to be packaged to in a way that adds value” at the moment of decision.

Josh Guttman of Softbank spelled out his firm’s interest in large asset classes underserved by technology – including residential and commercial real estate, fixed income and health care - particularly for teams that have demonstrated consumer behavior change. Johanne Wilson added emphasis on the importance of excellent customer service Brian Hirsch gestured broadly about transparency and disruption, investments to work against the current industry rather that with it, aiming to “free the world, free the market......”

Regardless of which team's strategy resonates the most for you - Three key takeaways:

Real Estate Tech is a thing – an established investment meme.

We’ve moved beyond incubators and firmly into the VC domain of the capital stack – expect panels like these at every alternative investment conference to come.

Data has to help someone in order to be valuable - otherwise it's just noise. Watch for examples of Wu's points - teams, products and services that help AT THE MOMENT OF DECISION - providing help, not just information - which requires an ever increasing degree of understanding and empathy for a real-live consumer.

At the risk of being sacrilegious, given that my phone numbers all start with a 206, I am not a sports fan. Especially when it comes to team sports involving big locker rooms and screaming crowds. However, like the rest of Seattle, I was entranced at by last Sunday’s Superbowl and warmed by the hero’s welcome this town is pouring out for our returning athletes.

The most fascinating part of the game for me was off field – when the commentators’ discussion around Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson turned to his father’s now-famous question to his young, 5’11” son years ago “Why not you?”… as well as the young Wilson’s response, including years of dedicated practice and intentional preparation. The reporters recounted how, last year at this time, Wilson showed up early as he purportedly ‘always does’ – not at his own team’s game - but at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. Wilson arrived before the competing teams – walked the field at the Superdome, got down on his knees to SMELL it. He watched the teams prepare, listened as the seats filled, and felt the roar of the crowds – to take in those sounds, smells and feelings as preparation for the moment when, not if, it was his turn. That's visualization at work. That, I can relate to. Victor Cheng, Founder of The Strategic Outlier Letter and counsel to MBA’s and over-achievers all over the world, wrote a poignant post a few days after Seattle’s victory. He emphasized the critical combination of both a) breaking through self-imposed limits on what you think you’re capable of b) putting in the deliberate practice to reach long term goals On dreaming big – Cheng reasons that most people dramatically underestimate their capabilities, which in turn, limits their performance.

If you think a particular opportunity exceeds your actual limits as a human being, the logical decision is to not bother trying. It is the optimal decision because it conserves time and mental energy resources for a non-achievable outcome.The problem with this line of thinking is most people perceive the limits of their own capabilities incorrectly. (Ha, I’ve been doing this my entire life!)…

So Cheng is a massive proponent of dreaming big. He’s not the only one who has studied the impact of goals as a self-fulfilling prophecy for extraordinary performance. By way of example, James Collins and Jerry Porras popularized the acronym BHAG – short for “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” during research for their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. The authors provided the following examples:

However – wanting and believing is necessary, but not sufficient. Echoing the editors of Fortune in the phenomenally researched 2006 article “Secret of Greatness” and Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, Cheng says:

It was not my natural talent that has led to my success, it was my willingness to put in the effort. The wonderful thing about this is that it is a CHOICE available to any human being.Because talent without effort, still does not get you anywhere.Nobody is born ready to be a management consultant, a Superbowl champion quarterback, or in any other career.

As many of you know, I am hiring for my team at Redfin. Last week, conducting reference calls - I heard this: "Candidate X wants to be known as the smartest and most informed person in real estate in Seattle. Big goal, right?! I think it's kind of amazing - and given what I have seen over the last two years, If "X" wants it, "X" will do the work to make it happen. It makes ME want to be better!"

I like that.

I like it because that's the kind of goal one needs as an anchor, and a beacon - to keep pushing through the days working on anything that matters, when things are harder than planned, take longer, and it's time to dig deep.

So what’s your Superbowl? Your BHAG? And what field will you go to at dawn, to prepare? Read on below for the full text of Cheng’s article.

My favorite quote from Sunday’s Superbowl was, “Why Not You?”It was a saying attributed to the father of Russell Wilson, quarterback of the now champion Seattle Seahawks.The quote was referenced by the sports commentators and again by Wilson in a post-game interview. It was something Wilson’s father said to him many years ago when he was debating whether or not to play football -- because he was at the time too short and too small to be a football player.When he asked his father for his advice, his father said, “Why not you?”In my opinion, that question is one of THE best questions to ask yourself when you’re contemplating a new challenge.In fact, it was what my friend Eric (now a partner at LEK) and I asked ourselves when we were 14 years old, debating whether we should try out for the football team. We debated. We hemmed and we hawed. We were too small. We had no experience. We hardly fit the profile of the typical football player.In the end, I remember thinking to myself, “Why not us?” I mean, seriously... why not?I have had a lot of self doubt in my life. As many of you know, I have struggled with low self esteem for most of my life. But, one thing I am grateful for is that despite this, I didn’t let these thoughts stop me from taking action.And the one (rhetorical) question I’ve often asked myself through the years was, “Why not me?”I said that to myself before I started to learn to play football (4 years later I would become co-captain of my high school (American) football team and my team would win the California state championship for our division).When I applied to consulting firms in college, I was absurdly intimidated. I mean, who was I to think that as a 21-year-old kid, I could advise Fortune 500 executives? I mean... really, come on. But, I did say, “Why not me?” (ha... though I didn’t quite fully believe it! I did believe it enough to at least put in the effort, which is the key point here.)Then low and behold, I actually did get consulting job offers. Then I was mortified. Gulp, now I actually had to go to work and see real clients. I mean who am I to be capable enough to do that?I remember looking at those recruiting brochures (by they way, they are designed to impress / intimidate you and the average MBB consultant is often not as impressive as the ones cherry-picked for the brochures... but I didn’t know that at the time).I was thinking, "Geez, there are consultants with a Harvard undergrad, a Harvard MBA, and a Harvard MD --- oh crap, that is impressive. I mean I’m not an MBA. I’m not an MD. How in the world am I supposed to keep up?"Again, I did whisper to myself (extremely faintly this time), “Why not me?”I believed it even less this time, but enough to show up for work and to do the work required to do the job well.Then I was extremely intimidated by the clients. One of them was a billionaire who had a movie made about him. I thought, "Who am I to advise this client? I’m not a billionaire. They don’t make movies about me."But I eventually got over this.(Hint -- clients are first and foremost human beings. Human beings are more similar than dissimilar to other human beings. Human beings have several common traits -- a lot of them worry about stuff, many have insecurities, and we all just want to belong. When you realize this, you realize a billionaire human being vs. a non-billionaire human being are still both... well, human beings.)Later in my career as I moved to working for myself, it became important to work on my credibility as an expert. Interestingly, being ex-McKinsey wasn’t enough alone to get clients. So I started to work on my media profile and began doing live national television interviews.THAT really freaked me out.I mean who am I to be an expert on live national television?(Side Note: I can deliver a 3-hour talk with 3 minutes of preparation, but to deliver a 3-minute interview on live national TV took me 3 hours of preparation and practice in front of a mirror.)You can see one of my live national TV interviews for Fox here: Fox Business TV ClipAs I’ve looked back on this interesting dynamic in my own life, my clients' and friends' lives, and through the many emails from CIBs informing me of their MBB offers (By the way, the vast majority of the people who get MBB offers are surprised they got it. Many did not think they could do it. But they followed my guidance, and practiced a lot and got it), I’ve learned a HUGE lesson from it all.This lesson has been one of the defining insights of my career (as in insight applied to my own career as opposed to insights for a client).It is an insight that I think applies to 99% of people.Here it is:What you are actually capable of is GREATER than what you PERCEIVE yourself to be capable of.Here’s how to visualize this point:Imagine a piece of paper with a small photo of yourself in the middle of the page.At the edge of the paper, draw a thick black rectangular line with a marker. Label this box “actual limit.”This is the actual limit of your capabilities as a human being. Your capability in your lifetime will never exceed this limit.Now somewhere in the middle between this outer black box and the center of the page where your picture resides, draw another box -- this time using a dashed line. Label this line “perceived limit.”For nearly everyone I know, there is big gap of white space between those two boxes -- the box illustrating your perceived limits vs. the one for your actual limits.The reason this discrepancy exists is due to a phenomenon that I call:THE SELF-LIMITING BELIEFThis false belief holds back more people (myself included) than any other factor in a career.Here’s why.If you think a particular opportunity exceeds your actual limits as a human being, the logical decision is to not bother trying. It is the optimal decision because it conserves time and mental energy resources for a non-achievable outcome.The problem with this line of thinking is most people perceive the limits of their own capabilities incorrectly. (Ha, I’ve been doing this my entire life!)Despite all my self doubts, I’ve very often had a tiny part of me -- sometimes as little as 5% of me -- that said to myself, “Why not me?”And despite 95% of me thinking that I was in way over my head, I fortunately listened to that 5% and actually made the effort needed to find out for myself whether something was really out of my reach or not.Looking back, it turns out this tendency was profoundly impactful on my career.It was not my natural talent that has led to my success, it was my willingness to put in the effort. The wonderful thing about this is that it is a CHOICE available to any human being.Because talent without effort, still does not get you anywhere.Nobody is born ready to be a management consultant, a Superbowl champion quarterback, or in any other career.We are all born human... and human beings are often much more capable than they realize.What are you capable of that you don’t even realize?Please click here to share your thoughts.Thanks, -Victor Cheng

]]>Mon, 02 Dec 2013 03:24:12 GMThttp://www.kateqknight.com/blog/-a-thanksgiving-recipe-stop-look-goHappy Thanksgiving!! Hope you have all enjoyed a wonderful four days. Today - I’ll pass on a delightful recipe for happiness. Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk, TED celebrity and founder of the Gratefulness Network – has studied happiness and its cousin, gratitude, for years. His thesis: while many assume that happiness opens the door for gratitude, Rast concludes that a grateful approach to life is the foundation – happiness is a pleasant byproduct. Rast clarifies that we cannot and should not be grateful for everything - violence, war, loss, unfaithfulness… However, even when we are presented with something terrible, we can choose to be grateful for the opportunity in what we do next. That opportunity is the gift – which Rast calls the “master key” to happiness. “It can be an opportunity to stand up for your values. To help others, to do something kind, to build something… Those who avail themselves of those opportunities are the ones we admire, the ones we feel have made something meaningful in their lives.” So – how can we find a METHOD to cultivate this response? Rast goes on to dissect the tiny inflection points that can make the difference between something happening to us vs. opportunities we create. He boils it down to three steps: STOP. LOOK. And GO.

He focuses on a key point which has been well-researched by the likes of Martin Seligman, Hitendra Wadhwa, Dan Baker and leading psychologists and neuroscientists – Fear is one of the most significant blocks to happiness – but gratitude cancels out fear, as the two emotions cannot be sustained simultaneously. Grateful people are also joyful people. Shake, stir, repeat and voila: happiness. What to do? Follow the good man’s advice:STOP - Build in small moments of reflection to pause. - Take a moment to watch Stiendle Rast’s video “A Good Day” - Brad Feld – a favorite VC and “life-hacker” offers a number of hard-earned lessons at regular intervals. He and his wife have built in daily Four Minutes in the Morning (it’s not what you think!!), monthly Life Dinners and a quarterly un-plug. Ric and I have taken these up and I’ve shared with many start-up friends who have used them with great results. - Develop a meditation practice. Hitendra Wadhwa, founder of the Institute for Personal Leadership at Columbia University, a math genius, McKinsey alum, and counsel to business professionals globally, is adamant about the power of meditation to re-wire the brain. Wadhwa offers that meditation is one powerful technique to monitor thoughts and feelings so they can be consciously deployed. Along with solitude, it helps create self-awareness – core to Wadhwa’s leadership teachings. High performance athletes have engaged in visualization and focusing the mind and body for hundreds of years – business leaders can benefit from similar intentional practice. LOOK - Frame, or Re-frame what you are seeing, in terms of the opportunity it presents – for learning, mastery, and improvement. - Dan Baker is adamant that happiness comes from being proactive. A note – this is different than control. Rather, it is taking the reigns during what Baker refers to as the “critical quarter-second” to reframe situations to make sure that your interpretation puts you in the driver’s seat, rather than ceding direction of the emotional train over to a sense of victimization, entitlement, or blaming someone else. - Daniel Pink, author of DRiVE - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us has documented compelling stories about workplace performance and incentives. When people frame challenge as an opportunity to gain mastery over a particular skill or subject - they remain engaged and achieve better results. Try it. GO - Do something about it! - Choose your response – recognize always that we DO have choice. - Practice makes perfect. Cultivating an appreciative outlook for life will take time. The standard rule of thumb for expertise is 10,000 hours...maybe you'll be faster..

]]>Tue, 26 Nov 2013 06:12:55 GMThttp://www.kateqknight.com/blog/ps-im-hiringLots of news about Redfin lately. This just in - Redfin Builder Services is hiring.

We are growing like gangbusters. Know someone amazing? Have ideas and want to be part of something big enough to matter, but small enough that you will see the impa?

I want to hear from you, and I need your help.

More on the current opening here. If you want to connect - reach out anytime at kate.knight@redfin.com.

How we won the opportunity to bring their gorgeous building to market? Probably best to ask them... On our side, hard work. We will deliver the full strength of Redfin - from digital marketing and breadth of exposure on Redfin.com to sophisticated PR, marketing, and design. As an early indication, we reached 674 'Likes' on the Solo Lofts Facebook page and over 125 registrations within five days of launch - 95% buyers and 5% real estate professionals. Not bad for 20 units. So far, so good. Pre-sales begin in January, 2014. Follow Solo Lofts on Facebook for the latest details, and register online, as we'll be building on that momentum in weeks to come.

Also November 13th, just a few hours later, Redfin announced it's $50mm capital raise led by Tiger Global Management and T Rowe Price. This would be great news on any day. It's phenomenal news for Redfin Builder Services, as funds will be invested in growth - no secrets there, all press has highlighted this topic. Net, 2014 will be an exciting and busy year for all of us.

Earlier this summer, just two minutes and seventeen seconds after sending my signed contract across, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman was the first to respond " Welcome aboard! We’re so glad you decided to join us. Strap in, it’s going to be a wild ride".

Just before Halloween, Matt Lerner published a fun, DIY commentary in GeekWire re: teaching his kids python. Lerner, CTO of WalkScore drew from a range of resources, then gave sample sequences to try at home.

One more for good consideration - Hopscotch. Hopscotch is coding for kids, an iPad programming language. It is designed to work for both genders and especially effective for girls, which, often get the sense that coding is not their domain. As one user said: “My daughter always thought computer programming was for boys, but she could not put down Hopscotch, and said building a game seemed fun to her too." Hopscotch lifts sights, with the mantra: Anybody can code. Even—and especially—kids.

]]>Sat, 02 Nov 2013 17:24:43 GMThttp://www.kateqknight.com/blog/start-up-wisdom-from-a-lady-who-grew-a-set11-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-my-businessRic and I are both launching new ventures we love and believe in, meaning we spend our weekdays/nights working at a sprint and Sunday mornings recovering and aligning calendars to carve out precious time for family, friends exercise, and dates. Yesterday, he sent me "11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business" from the hilarious Stephanie St.Claire. This was my first exposure to her writing and I gobbled it up. Read it three times. Loved it.

St. Claire's perspective is thoughtful and granular. She nails the concepts of internal resistance - ('no way, I shouldn't have to do that/ it won't take me that long b/c I'm special!') and the opportunities for self-mastery with specific, well considered examples. She brings marketing to the fore - emphasizing that it is not enough to build something beautiful - you have to get it to the people who can use it. She slices through the romanticism of the lone creative genius and clarifies that growth requires excellence in Marketing. Sales. Convincing. Evangelizing. This point is a pillar of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi'sCreativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Csikszentmihalyi studied individuals in art, politics and business who had a lasting impact on their domain of choice. What did he find? The most successful exhibited both ends of the behavioral spectrums: a) extreme internal discipline to work and create, alone, often for days at a time AND b) extreme ability to identify gate-keepers and taste-makers, to present and 'sell' work in the channels that matter, in order to gain acceptance and widespread adoption.

St. Claire has earned a spot with the list of goodies I turn to and recommend to anyone with start-up aspirations, including Paul Graham,Brad Feld and Dan Shipper (currently a senior at UPenn). I'll caveat that unlike the others on this list, St. Claire is neither a techie nor a VC - she is a guidance counselor and expert in the laws of attraction. I'll posit that this is a good thing. She's an entrepreneur, doing what she loves, and doing it well. Her list:

1. Running the business is your first priority. 2. Ready to meet your soul mate? It’s you. 3. Your trajectory for success will take as long as everyone else’s, even though you’re special and brilliant. 4. Running out of money is a common part of the journey.5. Build a hybrid stream of income.6. Read Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work. 7. Spend less time researching, more time doing.8. Only say yes to clients/collaborative projects that are HELL YESES. 9. You must devote time to becoming a brilliant marketer. MUST.10. Email will be your new best frenemy. 11. Do not work your business 7 days a week... Breathe, play, laugh. Remember how lucky you are to be an entrepreneur. If you want to be smarter in business, read everything these two people write:James Altucher and Penelope Trunk.

For the full post - read on below. It's worth it.

11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business

A lot of people like to fool you and say that you’re not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That’s what I learned from selling crack. -Snoop Dogg

My name is Stephanie St.Claire, and I am an unfunded entrepreneur. I’ve been in business for 3 years, after engaging in my own personal and tenuous renaissance (uh…divorce) and rediscovering my Divine Core Purpose. In other words, I grew a pair of ladyballs and started living the life I always wanted to while making money doing it.But there was a LOT to learn, and some of those things weren’t covered in Who Moved My Cheese.Throw these 4 rockstars into a blender, and you’ll have a composite sketch of me in the first three months of my business:Glitter was literally shooting out of my eye sockets as I quit my PR firm job and started my own business. Full of optimism, living in New York City, and surrounded by a tribe of friends who were also launching businesses, art, and gigs, I felt it was the perfect time to make the bold move to entrepreneurship. I was now officially Living My Dream and Working For Myself which meant that I was In Charge of My Financial Destiny and Captain of My Promising Future.Luckily my initial hyper-optimism buoyed me whilst, oscillating between euphoria and despair, I was slowly but systematically forced off The Magic School Bus and onto the S.S. Battleship Long Haul.I was a quick and eager learner, but despite the hours of webinar watching, countlessFriday nights pumping out site copy, and teaching myself everything I could about HTML, there were just some things I didn’t get. I had to fall on my ass to procure the “masters degree in life survival” every entrepreneur has to earn on their “journey.”Yes, those were wildly gesticulated air quotes.Here are 11 things I wish I knew when I started my business. I hope they will save you some time, but at the very least, some anguish because — experience is a good teacher here — the sodium from your tears acts as a corrosive melting agent on all brands of premium ice cream, but otherwise, makes a superb saline for your dirty martini. Cry over a cup, oh fathomless bird of preneurial gumption!ONE.Running the business is your first priority. Your success (and financial stability) will come from expertly running your business — not teaching yoga, life coaching, writing copy, or making jewelry. In other words, you will spend 15% of the time doing what you love (your gift..in my case coaching and writing) and 85% of the time marketing, administrating, selling, strategizing your business, and answering a shitload of email. Survival will totally hinge on how quickly you adopt this role of Business Owner first, creator of pretty things, second.This sucked for me because I wanted nothing to do with running a business. I just wanted to be a writer and a life coach who wrote and coached all day. I didn’t get it.TWO.Ready to meet your soul mate? It’s you. Entrepreneurship is the most life changing relationship (like marriage or parenthood) that a person can have. You will be confronted overandoverandover with your fears, your insecurities, your crappy excuses, your limitations, your justifications, your shitty integrity, and your inefficient time management. The standard you held yourself to in the work-a-day world was good enough then, but it won’t be good enough to run your own business. And you will learn to accept yourself through all this because in order to get up every day and create, you have to. Somehow through that process of acceptance, while you’re busy putting yourself out there in spite of your flaws, your weaknesses will transform and you will fall in love with yourself. Not in the over-hyped “SELF LOVE 2012” way, but in a quiet way that sneaks up on you after witnessing a thousand splinter-sized moments of transcending the baser aspects of yourself.THREE.Your trajectory for success will take as long as everyone else’s, even though you’re special and brilliant. I heard the “two-year rule” when I started my biz, but I was confident I could do it in 6 months. I believed with every fiber of my glittery, go-gettin’ heart that my work ethic (15-hour days/7 days a week), along with my talent, skills, and personal magic, I could rip a path to accelerated success because also, this was A Leap of Faith and I was Living in My Divine Authenticity and that was worth some express lane juju points from Heaven.Jesus had other plans.See #4.FOUR.Running out of money is a common part of the journey. You won’t expect it, because you prepared for the long haul. You secured a business loan, or got some investors, or sold your house (cough, cough), or have one year’s worth of savings and you have planned accordingly.But then all of the sudden, midst the puffy clouds and blue skies, your little twin engine Entreprenairplane will sputter, the needle on the gas gauge unexpectedly plummeting to zero, and you will have only one choice… land your plane on the wild, abandoned air strip called Bank Balance: Fourteen Dollars. And this will be the LAST PLACE you ever thought you’d crash land, cuz didn’t you pass this test on No More Sephora Island?Well.The good news is this is a rite of passage that will launch you into the League of Business Badassery in which, once you are out of the money hellhole, you will be unstoppable. You’ve been to the baddest prison there is, you looked down the barrel of your worst fear, and you stood your ground. You didn’t quit. You got up the next day, and you wrote your next post, created your next offering, and answered the email with zero dollars in your bank account.There is nothing more beautiful than running out of money and realizing that you are doing your work because you’ve got the guts tostand in the face of no agreement and push through when there is no evidence of security. You really, truly love what you do, and you’d do it for free if you had to.Irony is a sassy bitch, isn’t she?FIVE.Build a hybrid stream of income. Take a second job if it will give you peace of mind. Please don’t be a jackass like I was and make it mean that you’re failing at your business. I was so resistant to “dividing my focus” or taking any action which I interpreted as undermining my commitment to being a successful writer and coach. Do you see the hellish mousetrap that was? I really thought that by making a Plan B I was telling the Universe I wasn’t 100% serious about my success. Don’t even get me started with my crazy aversion to Plan B’s. I created a worse problem by allowing financial stress to gut me of my sanity.If having a steady stream of part-time income would be in service to your peace of mind, DO IT.I finally came to terms with the fact that I was being obnoxiously naïve about how money, peace, survival, and timing all work together and I got a second job. By doing this, I supernaturalized my own path to freedom and self-sustainability. And since I wasn’t freaking out about money anymore, I liberated more creative real estate in my brain to apply toward my business.SIX.Read Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work. The biggest challenge you will deal with in running a business is your own resistance. Period, end of story. Before you study anything about marketing, social media, money, or time management, read this book. You’ll be treated to gems like this:Our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace, or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is resistance. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why he can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do.A professional distances herself from her instrument. The pro stands at one remove from her instrument — meaning her person, her body, her voice, her talent; the physical, mental, emotional, and psychological being she uses in her work. She does not identify with this instrument. It is simply what God gave her, what she has to work with. She assesses it coolly, impersonally, objectively.Does Madonna walk around the house in cone bras and come-f*k-me bustiers? She’s too busy planning D-Day. Madonna does not identify with “Madonna.” Madonna employs “Madonna.”

SEVEN.Spend less time researching, more time doing. Researching/studying/ reading other people’s blogs is a form of resistance. In order to get clarity, you must act. Clarity does not come by learning more, it comes by jumping in with your instincts and putting yourself out there, even if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.Block out the distractions (turn off the phone, Facebook, and Gmail) and take inspired action that feels fun, easy, and exciting. This will rattle your inner Perfectionist Catholic German Drill Sergeant, because you have been taught that succeeding requires you to do boring, tedious crap that’s difficult. Sometimes you’ll have to do boring stuff (prep your tax receipts) but when working your business, make it fun and exciting or you will end up indulging in resistance behaviors.EIGHT.Only say yes to clients/collaborative projects that are HELL YESES. Scrutinize any joint project carefully and qualify the person you are doing the project with (even if they are your friend and you LOVE them). Get everything in writing before you embark on the project, with a clear division of labor and deadline dates. You will most likely be splitting the profits, so have two numbers in your head: The $ number you would LIKE to make, and the $ number you NEED to make in order to pay for your time. Set the first financial deadline early to make your NEED number so that you both have the freedom to walk away if the project isn’t going to be profitable. Have a transition strategy in mind so in case that happens and one of you wants to continue on with the project, there is a way to pass the baton gracefully.Summed up: COMMUNICATE ABOUT EVERYTHING, even though you’re friends, even though you love each other, even though you trust each other, even though you’ve worked together at XYZ Company, because projects have a way of going sideways and making everyone a little custodial and overreactive.NINE.You must devote time to becoming a brilliant marketer. MUST. I know you just want to spend all your days making hipster sarsaparilla-scented mustache wax, or needle pointing edgy throw pillows for Etsy, or writing your YA zombie novel, or life coaching women to stratospheric success, but if you don’t spend time marketing you will not make money.This was my biggest weakness when I started because I thought marketing = slimy sales letters with big arrows and opt-in boxes and I couldn’t! I wouldn’t! So I put my head in magical fairyland sand, stubbornly insisting that my customers would be tractor-beamed into my budding practice by the pulsating, heavenly light that radiated from my vision boards and 4 blog posts.And then I ate canned food and spaghetti for a long, long time.But this rescued me — knowing what category I fell into: a guru-star, wisdom guide (ding ding), or connector/supporter. Beth Grant explains this expertly and you can watch a free webinar here which will help you figure out which one you are. And once you have that figured out, marketing to your customers will be a thousand times easier because you will be working within your natural vibe. I am not an affiliate for this, I just really love her work.Learn what way you like to market and stick to that and do it consistently and often. Even if you hire a pro, you will be doing some marketing yourself. Keeping your website fresh and current is essential in your marketing, so learn how to work WordPress and learn some HTML code. You will be in the guts of your website A LOT.TEN.Email will be your new best frenemy. Your inbox will explode. You care about everyone, but you can’t help everyone. Read: Not everyone is your customer. Your inbox will be a jumble of people who want to say thank you, people who want free stuff, and people who want your services. Your job is to quickly discern who’s who and respond in the most appropriate way.Shorten the email back-and-forth as quickly as possible with people that are your potential clients. If your business is a consultancy where you are selling your time, I recommend having two form letters on hand that you can customize to the occasion: one for your potential customer and the other for your not potential customer.Your Customer: Acknowledge their situation, request, or problem and invite them to a 20-minute call. Include your available dates, times, and a phone number you can be reached.Not Your Customer: Acknowledge their situation, request, problem and direct them to other resources, practitioners, blogs, or articles that would be a splendid fit for them.I love personally connecting with my clients. In this area of business, I am 1997 all the way, and I pick up the phone and talk to them live. I set up all the calls on one day or schedule them after my regular client sessions. I have found this to save a colossal amount of time. In a 20 minute phone call, I accomplish the following:

Find out their history and current issues.

Explain to them how coaching works and pricing.

Ascertain if we are a right fit and they are ready for coaching.

Answer any of their logistical questions.

Give them a personal sense of what it would be like to work with me on the phone (my tone of voice, cadence through the call, etc.).

Process the invoice.

Set up the first session.

Do you know how long that would take back-and-forth by email?5 days to a month. Do not screw your own time economy.ELEVEN.Number eleven is a hodge-podge: Do not work your business 7 days a week. From time to time, forget everything you know about the “right way” to run a business and run it like a neighborhood lemonade stand. Do not price your offerings around your personal ability to pay for it — you are not your ideal customer. Work out perplexing issues in your business and it will resolve problems in other areas of your life. Breathe, play, laugh. Remember how lucky you are to be an entrepreneur. If you want to be smarter in business, read everything these two people write: Only say yes to clients/collaborative projects that are HELL YESES. Only say yes to clients/collaborative projects that are HELL YESES. James Altucher and Penelope Trunk.Now it’s your turn: What piece of advice could you offer a new entrepreneur? Onward!Stephanie St.Claire | Intuitive Guidance Counselor |BLISSBOMBED.com

]]>Thu, 24 Oct 2013 03:57:13 GMThttp://www.kateqknight.com/blog/five-cre-technology-teams-you-need-to-watchThis week, Urban Land Institute Magazine and the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce picked up a story my great friend Dylan Simon and I wrote highlighting five Commercial Real Estate Tech teams CRE professionals need to track. While there are dozens of fantastic teams out there, we showcased CompStak, 42Floors, Floored, Honest Buildings and View the Space.

Why? 1) These firms have proven their value to real live customers, raised enough capital to be around in years to come, and are making fundamental innovations to the business process in their respective domains. As such, each should be a household name in any CRE shop. However, we're both surprised by how frequently we get asked "Which real estate tech firms should I be watching??" We wrote this piece because most people read faster than we can talk ; D

2) Collectively, these firms represent a material change in the way our industry gathers data and how we use it to make decisions. Real Estate Data 1.0 was collected primarily via warehouses of analysts calling owners, brokers, and looking up public records one by one. Each of the teams we covered has a 2.0 approach - each gets some, if not all, of their data in from customers and aggregates it to create unprecedented visibility into the markets they cover. This method is fast and relatively inexpensive. The information these teams publish is easy to use. That means that a relative newbie to Real Estate can access gobs of information which used to be the exclusive purview of professionals who'd put in their time (...often decades of it).

That matters for Real Estate professionals because this has happened before. And when it's happened, it's turned the subject industry upside down.

Full text of the article below. As always, welcome your comments, questions and ideas.

Warmly, KQK

Over the last 12 months, a whirlwind of activity has taken place at the intersection of commercial real estate (CRE) and technology. Dozens of firms have emerged, spanning all aspects of the industry from leasing to investment sales to design. Though diverse in the challenges they are tackling, these firms have in common a fundamentally new approach to data. Each is aggregating information and making it accessible in online and mobile formats.

Commercial real estate may soon face a transformation similar to those seen in travel, retail, and single-family residential real estate. Taking cues from the impact of Amazon, Expedia, and Redfin, we anticipate better customer experiences, dramatic reductions in the time and expertise needed to make complex decisions, and a fresh set of faces in the ranks of industry leadership.

Highlighted below are five of the most promising teams in commercial real estate technology.

How they get their data: Brokers provide details of lease transactions and building attributes directly to Compstak’s website.

Why it matters: Compstak is shifting the data-sharing zeitgeist in commercial real estate and, in the process, establishing itself as a source of market intelligence. In its first few months, Compstak captured 100 percent of the 2012 lease transactions in urban New York and San Francisco, enabling a more comprehensive, detailed view of the market than ever before. www.compstak.com

How they get their data: Landlords and brokers upload current listings to 42Floors’ website. These data are supplemented by professional photography provided by 42Floors and layers of mapping and neighborhood data, all of which are posted online for users to view.

Why it matters: Rather than displace brokers, the service has the potential to enhance the broker’s role. It also provides customers with greater selection and convenience than ever before. www.42floors.com

How they get their data: VTS sends video teams on site to film available space and integrates data provided by other platforms, including 42Floors.

Why it matters: Digital tours enable brokers and prospective tenants to get a detailed feel for space, tour instantly, and share with colleagues anywhere in the world—all from their own devices. For landlords, VTS introduces unprecedented business intelligence to the leasing process. www.viewthespace.com

How they get their data: Floored sends its own teams, with customized Matterport 3D cameras, on site. Floored is also amassing a database of content for furniture, lighting, and interior decoration options—“every time we scan, we get data.”

Why it matters: Floored enables developers, architects, and interior designers to render buildouts and renovation plans down to the details at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional processes and with limitless customization options. www.floored.com

5. Honest BuildingsWhat it is: Honest Buildings (HB) is a social network for buildings that enables building owners to connect with architects, brokers, lenders, service providers, and tenants.

How they get their data: HB sweeps public records for base layers of building information and builds maps for context. Service providers and building owners upload details on projects and opportunities.

Why has the emergence of tech in CRE taken so long?To date, commercial real estate has been a slow adopter of technology. Three primary challenges have stood in the way:

Real estate is not a commodity. Buying a book or a plane ticket is relatively straightforward, and the products are simple. In contrast, real estate is complex, location-specific, and high risk—so professionals have been reluctant to move any building-related decisions online.

There is no central store of commercial real estate data. Unlike other industries that have recently gone online (e.g., travel, single-family home sales, stock and bond investments), the real estate industry still has no central database of its transactions. In fact, there is not even a consistent inventory for buildings for sale or lease.

Lastly, the financial incentives for many real estate professionals have favored opacity. As a result, it has been difficult to aggregate relevant data.

Why the sudden progress?The fastest-growing commercial real estate tech companies are overcoming some of these challenges by concentrating on the most collaborative sectors of the commercial real estate industry like commercial office leasing or lower-risk services like design and building information management. The rise of technology adoption is further fueled by broader environmental shifts, including demographics (i.e., younger talent and customers), rising expectations for what technology can do, and funding from venture capital firms.

Kate Knight manages Builder Services at Redfin and is Principal of En Alza, offering strategic consulting for teams at the intersection of real estate and technology. Dylan P. Simon is an investment sales broker in Colliers International’s Seattle office and specializes in advising clients on urban real estate strategies and multifamily investment.

It's been a whirlwind first few weeks with Redfin. We are working hard and fast to create new products for home-builders and real estate developers and have put together some data sets I look forward to sharing with you. In the meantime, I am taking a mandatory break this week.... relaxation via hip surgery. Arthroscopy for a long term running injury, under the care of the celebrated Dr. James Bruckner.

This is my second. Rather than immerse myself in the leagues of bad (and sometimes all-too-good) legal dramas on Netflix streaming, as I did on round one, I've taken the the quiet time as an opportunity to brush up on the tools of our trade.

If you're not already aware of Juice Analytics - they are worth getting to know. With the rallying cry "Your data is meant for action" - the team aims to help you mobilize your data to tell powerful stories. Juice offers a primer in 30 Days to Storytelling with Data. The layout is informal, with a wide range of resources.

I loved it - ploughing through the whole course in three days. Some of the most powerful work samples below:

2010 figures are based on official FBI Crime Reports. 2013 data is real-time, crowd-sourced by tweets to @GunDeaths, an anonymous source which continuously gathers and tweets gun-related deaths in the U.S. As long as a verifiable source is provided, anyone can contribute through Twitter or email.

From Periscopic: "We acknowledge that this data is incomplete. Some of the data may be missing or inaccurate, and many killings are not even reported in an online news source. While this data is less reliable, it provides a real-time window into daily gun violence on a national scale. The FBI 2010 dataset included only homicides. However....suicides are included in this 2013 visualization."

Shockingly, Slate estimates that nearly 60% of gun deaths are suicides, so their inclusion is material, to say the least. Watch the animation below for a poignant and powerful real-time representation.

2. Nancy Duarte's graphic analysis of MLK Jr's I Have A Dream Speech - what made it so powerful? A short poetic cadence, a mixture of what is and what could be. Silence for emphasis, repetition in series of three or four, metaphors and visual descriptions, familiar songs and scripture, political documents as reference. Watch and learn below. For more - see Maria Popova's perspective on Duarte's work @ Brain Pickings.

3. Hans Rosing's playful and utterly convincing argument re: The washing machine as the greatest invention of the industrial revolution.